The Wrecking Crew

The overarching themes for this blog concern transitions. The first is my passage from mid-life to old age. Secondly is our societal metamorphosis from an analog era to the digital century. Sometimes I talk about "being in the future", but that's from a reference point going back to the 1950's. The Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury future is here. At least from my vantage point. I read all the comic books and saw all the SciFi movies. Read some of the speculative fiction, too. Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek gave us The Communicator and Tricorder. We use them every day. Warp Speed and The Transporter Beam are going to get here sooner than you think. As advanced as today's science is, we're still a technology backwater.

Google, a member of the digital cabal reared its ugly head this week in a variety of ways. The cabal consists of the usual suspects, household names that make our lives easier: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and the aforementioned Google. They have a chokehold on our individual "private" data. But the company that made the big headlines this past week is Google. Full disclosure, I utilize Google's cash cow, the search engine, plus Google's Chrome browser, and I write these posts with Google's Blogger. Life wouldn't be the same without them. It's as if I have Stockholm syndrome, which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity.

The first article that came to my attention is from Forbes which stated: "Google secretly tests medical records search tool on nation's largest nonprofit health system.". This is Project Nightingale, and the name makes it sound altruistic, with an homage to Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. What Project Nightingale really does is collect data on patients and feeds it into an Artificial Intelligence machine. According to The Wall Street Journal, The data includes: name, date of birth, address, family members, allergies, immunizations, and the rest of your history of medical records including medications and medical conditions. This is exactly what you don't want the insurance companies to have on you.

Although it does have some benefits, such as suggesting treatment plans, it could give insurers carte blanche on what they deem as appropriate care. Or even worse, what they don't deem as appropriate care. You couple this with Google's recent acquisition of FitBit, insurance companies will have you tethered to a treadmill. Exercise is a good thing. But not when it's being dictated like in the "Nanny" state. A Google tango with the insurance companies would give them too much information. You'd be forced to knuckle under. They'd tell you to put that in your pipe and smoke it. The Brave New World.

Two days after the Project Nightingale enlightenment, The Wall Street Journal published an additional article stating Google would continue its expansion strategy by offering checking accounts:

"The project, code-named Cache, is expected to launch next year with accounts run by Citigroup Inc. and a credit union at Stanford University, a tiny lender in Google's backyard."

If you opt for this service, Google will have access to all sorts of financial information that was previously privy to only your bank. Direct deposits, bill payments, and whatever else you do with your checking account. You can see where I'm going with this. It's like a scorched earth policy, but Google is not alone. Most of the members of the digital cabal with the exception of Netflix, have aspirations to extend their tentacles into the health care and financial industries. Apple recently launched a credit card, Facebook is experimenting with digital currency, and Amazon is everywhere. It's industrial warfare with high barriers to entry. They fight tooth and nail. These technology behemoths became renown for building a better mousetrap, and flourished with creative destruction. Now they're so big, smaller companies can only hope to be bought out instead of unseat the incumbents.

I discovered this the hard way. Seven years ago I bought shares of stock in many small upstarts that appeared to have forward thinking technology to combat the more established Silicon Valley companies. Storage, data bases, programmatic advertising, you name it, I was looking for that 10 bagger. I did have some winners, but for the most part, was sold a bill of goods. The digital cabal had gone unchecked by the feds for too long, and remains so to this day. They have too much power and lord it over you. Facebook is like one big infomercial. Google likes to make you think they're an ideological crusader, but they're just as bad as AT&T or Standard Oil 100 years ago. We need a trust buster.

Currently, it's not the Federal Government that's going after Google, but the States' Attorney Generals. Forty-eight states along with Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico are investigating Google for antitrust violations in their advertising business. This is purportedly expanding into search and the Android operating system. This is a double-edged sword because of the China impact. Although it would be beneficial for companies in the digital cabal to pay their fair share of taxes, and have less of a stranglehold on their dominance domestically, it may put them behind the eight-ball in Artificial Intelligence. As I've stated in earlier posts, the more data you have, the better the A.I.. We're currently running neck and neck with China for dominance in A.I.. The country with the superior technology will benefit economically as well as militarily. They seem to go hand in hand. In other words, it's good for America. Whoever dismantles the digital cabal will need to do so with the United States in mind.